Slope of Hope Blog Posts

Slope initially began as a blog, so this is where most of the website’s content resides. Here we have tens of thousands of posts dating back over a decade. These are listed in reverse chronological order. Click on any category icon below to see posts tagged with that particular subject, or click on a word in the category cloud on the right side of the screen for more specific choices.

The Tome

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As I mentioned earlier, I am putting together the biggest book I’ve ever written before. In fact……..it’s TOO big. My publisher refuses to take anything over 480 pages, and at 540 pages, well, I’ve got some cutting to do. I look forward to letting everyone know when it’s ready.

tome

However, there is something I’d like to get a small handful of you to do for me, which is to proofread the book. I want to make this as unappealing as possible, since I only want to send out a few, but here’s what I need: some folks that are willing to:

  • read the entire book from cover to cover;
  • use a colored ball point pen (like red or something easy to spot) to mark any errors;
  • go through the entire book in no more than a week’s time
  • mail the marked-up book back to me.

If you’ve got time on your hands and want to do this, please drop me an email with your shipping address. Like I said, I only need a few people, so if I get too many, I will send you a polite refusal. Thank you!

A Strange Trip Backward

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brrI started Slope in March 2005, and about six years later, I decided to throw together a book of what I thought were some of its best posts. I called it the Slope of Hope Bathroom Reader, and it was a thin little volume which, oddly enough, has my highest average rate of any books I’ve ever written.

About a month ago, I got the idea to perhaps update the book. After all, seven more years had gone by, and many thousands of posts had been written since then. Surely there must be a better book that could be drawn from all that content.

It didn’t take me long to realize how right this was. I have been going through all of the “Best Of” posts, and selecting the best-of-the-best, and although I am not through with my examination of the site’s history, I already have enough content for a book at least three times bigger and MUCH higher quality. (more…)

Bad Blood Book

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At the risk of getting all Holden Caulfield-y on you, I really hate phony. Anything fake or phony drives me to distraction. Dyed hair. Insincere compliments. Ulterior motives. Plastic surgery. Anyone or anything constructing a facade just rubs me the wrong way.

And that is the principal reason I have written so many posts about Theranos (this is my eleventh one) even though it was never a public company and there’s nothing to chart about it. Some have even wondered out loud if I’m obsessed with Elizabeth Holmes. Far from it. First off, take my word for it, she isn’t my type, and secondly, I don’t get all tingly about baritone-voiced business criminals. Never been a turn-on. Honest. (more…)

Something I Learned

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Back on the 21st, I wrote an extremely brief book review about Sapiens. “Review” is probably too highfalutin a word, though, since I did little more than paste a few paragraphs from the Amazon site and wrote that I really enjoyed the book. I wanted to say something meaningful, but I was being lazy and just tossed it out there as a post to close the day.

However, Strawberry Blonde made this comment (I think she has ESP):

sb

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Sapiens

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For Christmas, my son bought me a copy of the book Sapiens which I thoroughly enjoyed. I’ll once again be a lazy bum and share with you Amazon’s own description: “One hundred thousand years ago, at least six different species of humans inhabited Earth. Yet today there is only one—homo sapiens. What happened to the others? And what may happen to us?

Most books about the history of humanity pursue either a historical or a biological approach, but Dr. Yuval Noah Harari breaks the mold with this highly original book that begins about 70,000 years ago with the appearance of modern cognition. From examining the role evolving humans have played in the global ecosystem to charting the rise of empires, Sapiens integrates history and science to reconsider accepted narratives, connect past developments with contemporary concerns, and examine specific events within the context of larger ideas.
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